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Shut Down Upon Our Little Days
I’ve always been something of a worrier, a personal trait that has never done me or anyone around me any good. Like so many other of my quirks, I have tried to pray it away or master it by stern self-discipline, but it remains as much a part of me as my freckles or my bone structure. Last time we were back in Texas, I found a tattered little prayer book in an antique store and bought it for five dollars (I’ve since learned that a used copy of this book sells on a major website for something like $80 or $90). Stuffed inside its pages were various holy cards…
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Early Patterns Of Grace
The first television show I remember is “Stoney Burke,” starring Jack Lord. The first drawing I ever made was of Jesus on the cross. The cross had flames shooting out of the bottom of it and it powered Christ through the spacious universe like a rood-rocket. The Lord’s hands looked like little broccoli florets, and you could clearly see the nails in His palms. The first dog I ever knew was our German shepherd, King, who died of cancer before he was even two years old. I was seven at the time, and I held his head as he panted before the end. He seemed to me to be the…
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What I Most Want
In replying to a comment on one of his recent posts on salvation and Heaven, Bruce Charlton made a very penetrating remark: “In general God grants us what we most want, or a simulacrum of it…” My interior ears pricked up at this phrase because I have been thinking about this very thing for much of the past few days. When it comes to the other side of this life, to Heaven, to what lies beyond, to eternity….what is it that I want? If I believe that my Father will give me the desires of my heart, and if this earthly sojourn serves to shape and refine those desires….where am…
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The Twelfth Of Ever
We slept in our recliners again last night, and it was a good sleep, as soundless and swaying as if we had been in the depths of the salty sea. Good until 1:30 AM, that is. That was the hour Jinx decided to say hello to his cousins, the coyotes, who were up on the far ridge singing their aria to the open face of the moon. He was right under the windows behind us, and he chuffed one short bark, then lifted his voice in a baritone howl that lasted a good quarter of a minute. I sat up and felt the atavistic hair on the back of my…
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A Wonderful Plan
This morning I read a post by Dr. Bruce Charlton, a post examining the idea of finding the spiritual — the significant — in everyday life. Dr. Charlton uses Rudolf Steiner as a platform from which to dive into this topic. I had never heard of Steiner before reading of him in the past on Dr. Charlton’s blog, and I will confess that my attempts to read Steiner have not panned out well. I lack the intellectual muscle-tone to heft this sort of weighty writing (I often have to read some of Dr. Charlton’s essays several times before I can grasp the points he is making). But the central idea…